There are people still going on about us wanting the name 'India'. Guy's drop that. Maybe I made a mistake with the way I went with my argument or possibly the title of this thread needs amending. I might contact the Mods., to see if they canm assist. You have got India and we have Pakistan. No problems.
Since I am clearly failing to convey my message, let me try another approach. I want you guy's to consider the following points:-
1. The name India has been around for a long time, it was a generic term. It described an entire region and everything that went on there was described in the generic term India rather similar to the name Europe.
Nobody is disagreeing. Perhaps something I said? If so, all I was trying to say was that India stands for three things at one and the same time today, and did so fairly often in the past: a geographic India, a cultural and civilisational India and a political India.
For the purposes of this discussion, we can accept the first two and avoid discussing the third. Works for me.
2. No culture or people exist within a vacuam. No realm is hermetically sealed. That even applies to the islands in the Pacific. So saying to me that X from Bihar shifted to Taxila, or Y shifted from Taxila to Cape Comorin or Z from Shillong invaded Madras does not impress anything. Unless I stated somewhere that Indus Valley [Pakistan] has been vaucuam sealed for 5,000 years ago.
Keep your shirt on. All that I was trying to say, and probably Rig Vedic as well, was that
- Differences between one Indus Valley location and another were probably less than those between any Indus Valley location and another elsewhere in south Asia;
- Differences between any Indus Valley location and any location in south Asia were probably less than differences between any Indus Valley location and any location anywhere outside south Asia.
3. Did you know that Roman's built cities in North Africa? Did you know that modern Roman characters evolved from Middle Eastern sources. At differant levels there is always interplay going on and in a region like South Asia that would expected. So our claim on Indus does not have to first establish that it existed like a island floating in the air. You have the local, you have the national, you have the regional, you have the continental and you have the world. There is interaction at all levels.
Hmmm.....now that you mention it......
4. My previous posts addressed only the Indus region because that is where Pakistan is. At that level I am not interested what the British were doing in Bengal in 1780. Of course as a South Asian I might take interst, as a Muslim I might take interest in what happened in Turkey or Algeria.
But that's the whole point, don't you see? Pakistan, like (political) India, is an artificial construct. It had no distinguishing trait or cultural distinction from the rest of south Asia except for the fact that it had a majority of one religious grouping in its population. Even there, it was not unique. So why need we consider the Indus Valley unique? Because in 1947, there was a majority of Muslims there? Is that as good as it gets?
5. Yes, indeed it is true that 'Punjab' in a sense was rejoined to Ganges plain in 1849, although it was done with Punjab screaming and crying. If you follow that logic the area that is Punjab had been at various times part of western based empires. If the Greeks had come in 1849 would you call that being 'rejoined' with a previous conqueror? Before 1849 the Indus Valley had gone through conquests many times in it's history. The reason I used 1849 as the baseline is because was I supposed to back to the Kushan Empire in covering 1947?
Everybody was screaming and crying about being bolted on. Want a list?
- Rajasthan;
- Indore;
- Gwalior;
- Chattisgarh;
- Odisha;
- Hyderabad;
- Nagpur;
- the Konkan, and Bombay with it;
- Mysore;
- the Carnatic;
- Kerala, largely the bits other than Travancore;
These were not traditionally part of the Ganges plain, unless I was sleeping through undergrad classes in history.
Further, your argument about it being accidental that Punjab was joined to the Ganges plain (although I don't agree that it was), and about it belonging to various western empires is not tenable. Count for yourself, from the beginning (may I assume the Mauryas? If not, I could get further back):
- Pre-Achaemenid;
- Maurya;
- Gupta;
- post-Gupta;
- Gurjara-Pratihara;
- Sultanate;
- Mughal;
- Sikh;
And the years under western empires?
- Achaemenid;
- Macedonian;
- Indo-Greek;
- Indo-Scythian;
- Kushana;
- Ephthalite Hun;
- Ghorid;
- Durrani;
Putting the two together gives a complete list, I think; correct me if I'm wrong.
The point? Punjab was under rule by a south Asian power far more than under a western south Asian power. If you want a base-line, by all means, use a base-line, but then I am entitled to point out that the base-line is merely that, an artificial means of reckoning, and that other base-lines would yield interesting alternative results.
6. My logic was that 1849 event was direct precursor to 1947. Nobody can say it was not. I described it as a marriage - That was an example. I do know the differance. The reason I called it forced marriage was because it was akin to that. I doubt Punjab voted to join British India but it did vote for the divorce. 1849 was the expression of brutal imperial will, 1947 was expression of the electorate. Why are you crying about 1947 will of the people? Are you validating the forced subjugation of Punjab?
The problem with deciding to fight a fight with facts is that you then live or die by the facts.
In EVERY election, the Indus Valley regions of the British Colony voted against the Muslim League, and for its own sectional interests. Only in the last election, when the feudal chiefs of the Punjab and of the Sind decided that it suited them to opt for a fresh new deal with Pakistan, where they would preserve their class-interests, they voted for the League, or rather, for Pakistan. At that time, the frontier DID NOT vote for Pakistan. So the vote was just Punjab and Sind in what is now Pakistan.
Don't you think the bit about brutal imperial will and the expression of the electorate hugely misplaced? What expression of the electorate? Check the results, and suddenly the juxtaposition doesn't seem so stark. Are you validating the rule of the feudals? Please be fair, not to those who find themselves asking awkward questions, but to the facts.
7. I suppose there are two aspects to the issue. First which has nothing to do with India, which is how do we sway the public in Pakistani to what we are advocating and undoing the mistakes of the past. It is going to be long hard trek but a journey of 1,000 miles begins with the first step.
Sure. It is a wonderful thing to start, and you and other liberals have started. It is inspiring.
8. The second does to a degree involve you guy's. India was a generic term. Had it remained a generic term we would not have had any issues with being called Indian ( whilst being proud Pakistani ) and accept that we have influenced and been influenced the/by Indic world.
Sorry, don't want to talk about this. It's not about us using the name India, as you keep saying, so let's not talk about India.
9. Today however we have to recognize that 'India' is a brand, wholly owned by Bharat - Please don't go into 'it was your fault'. That is a fact in 2012. Brand India rightly belongs to the republic on the east of Pakistan. I notice the India GP team is called 'Force India'. Excellant. Bravo.
Thanks. Feels good. It was kind of accidental. We never intended to eat into cultural India or to geographical India. And I doubt that we can do much about it.
10. In 2012 if you insist on using the term India as a generic term, I am afraid we can't agree to that. That is why if you say to me 'Do I belong to the Indic world' I will say NO. If you say do I belong to South Asia I will say YES.
EMPHATICALLY not a problem. But again, the heavy weight of tradition.....
11. We have to begin changing over to the generic term South Asia, if we don't we are always going to be losers because the mix up betwen generic term India and brand India is detrimental to our interests.
Sure. Please promote the brand south Asia - it already exists - and popularise it, and you won't find any resistance on this side. But it isn't our problem if the rest of the world continues to act its confused self.
12. We all know what oranges are. I go to the local supermarket and on display are Jaffa, Maroc, Nefertiti, Sunstar. These are branded oranges from Isreal, Marocco, Egyptian and USA respectively. Can you imagine if a brand managed to patent the generic orange? The result would be it would brand it's oranges as Orange Trademark. Can you imagine the trouble it would cause with rest of the producers? This is probably a poor example but I hope it convey's my point.
Not exactly a poor example, but a bad one from your point of view.
Effectively, you are saying that there are various brands of India, Bharat India, Pakistan India, Nepal India, Sri Lanka India, Burma India, Bhutan India, and Nepal India, and Bangladesh India (oooh, how the Bangladeshis will love this!). This being the situation, we can't have Bharat India hogging the name India.
The problem is that we are really talking about three distinct entities, geographic, cultural and political. We can and do own the political name, the geographic and cultural ones are not owned by us, but are generic. What do we do about that? It is others using it that is proving to be a bother. And it doesn't always work; what do we call Cambodia, Java and Thailand, leave alone the Buddhist element in Korea and Japan, or the linguistic links to the Philippines? South Asian? I can't see that horse running.
13. I am avoiding making any comments on anything to do with scriptures. I already said scriptures have a place but as source of facts. Please no. Next thing you will have idiots quoting from Quran, the Torah etc. Those hold value as belief systems so please keep them out. Let us stick to secular sources.
Most of us will agree. Perhaps you might be referring to the discussion about the Avesta, the Rig Veda and so on. That was just time-pass (south Asian for playing noughts and crosses while waiting for the next session to begin), and nothing serious.
And somebody said 'I am a secret admirer'. With due respect my biggest downfall is I spit out what I feel and if feel something I will say it. I don't keep things inside.
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If anyone objected to transparency and clarity of communications, you shouldn't listen to such an idiot.